Even if I am making progress, I don’t see it! The plateau effect

03.06.2016

3731 0 0

Even if I am making progress, I don’t see it! The plateau effect

Every single person, who has ever tried to acquire a skill, is familiar with the not-making-progress-feeling. We don’t mean skills like riding a bicycle — it is pretty basic: once you learn how to do it, you never forget. What we mean here is more advanced skills like playing a musical instrument, playing a team sport like soccer, and, of course, speaking a foreign language.
Ok, so what is this «plateau effect»?
What were your first months of studying English like? Full of new people, knowledge and surprises? Given that you studied in a good language school, you started speaking a completely new language during the very first lesson (read why it is possible in our article here).
Let’s take a look at a more specific answer. Say, in the beginning you know 1 word. In about 2 months you know 1000 words, which means that it took you just 2(!) months to learn a thousand times more words! That’s a hell of a progress, isn’t it?
What happens next? For example, you learn another 1000 words in next 2 months. So, you knew 1000 words, now you know 2000 words, just 2 times more than 2 months ago. Not that impressive anymore? You spent just as much time, but the progress you’ve made is way less significant. Are you partially disappointed? And what if you open a decent dictionary and find out how many words there are still left for you to learn? Devastation. (Of course, all figures in the example are not exactly specific, so don’t take them seriously — everybody chooses different schedule, different methods and learns stuff with different speed).
The «plateau effect», nice to meet you.
Why such a strange term «plateau»?
Imagine you are climbing a mountain: it’s boiling, every step is a challenge, but you clearly realize that you are going up. No doubt about it. Once you reach the summit, you are on a plateau. It’s way easier to walk here, but you don’t understand which part of this area is higher and which is lower. And is there any difference in height? Hopefully, the metaphor is clear. It can easily be transposed on language learning.
Plateau is the French for a flat open area.
And how do I get over this plateau and climb higher?
Initially, it’s important to understand that before Intermediate students only learn thing that can’t «survive» without. At this point they learn the very basic stuff like first grammar tenses, the most necessary words and so forth. However, later they go deeper into the language (you have probably noticed that you had to return to the material you had already learned and find out something new about it), they learn slang, idioms, synonyms and phrasal verbs.
Don’t be scared, just understand that it’s impossible to «learn» a language to a point when you can say «I know everything I need». You can only reach a certain level.
Here are come simple tips on how to keep going:
1.Don’t slow down. Slowing down might seem to be reasonable: you have learned a lot, so why not? Well, it’s not a good idea. Material gets harder and so do the conversations you listen to practicing your comprehension skills. So, keep calm and study. The only thing you can do is change the focus. Maybe it’s time to pay more attention to speaking or writing (depending on your goals).
2. Study on your own. In the beginning self-studying can be a dangerous idea: you don’t know if you pronounce words correctly. However, when you English is about Intermediate level, you already «feel» the language well enough to be able to understand if you are making a mistake. That’s why:

watch YouTube channels you like;
watch movies and tv-series in English;
read newspapers and books.

3. Keep studying with your teacher. No matter what, you teacher always knows better what exercises are beneficial for you, which words you might need and which don’t deserve your time and attention (read this amazing article about the Zipf’s law).
4. Write in English. You can:

find a pen-friend;
write movie and tv-show reviews for different web-sites like IMDb;
write dictations. You develop both your writing and listening skills;
write essays. You can take them from international English exams such as TOEFL. This helps to learn to express you ideas clearly (we highly recommend writing on paper — it helps to train you memory).

Obviously, there is a challenge ahead: keep studying no matter how hard and useless it might seem. High-quality Skype lessons can be a great help!

Please, login to leave a comment

Blog

Popular

Even if I am making progress, I don’t see it! The plateau effect

Ok, so what is this «plateau effect»?

Why such a strange term «plateau»?

And how do I get over this plateau and climb higher?

You may like